Alright, y'all, second-to-last chapter. I can't believe it's taken me this long.

In my horrifically long hiatuses, I have been thinking quite a bit about voice actors. I have henceforth decided that Thoughtful Smurf will be voiced by Lily Collins (Snow White on Mirror Mirror). Such an important decision, I know, but I feel it's useful to have a voice to go with a character. Anyway.

FreakingCrazy- Almost done, my friend. And you're 1000% correct, it will be nice to be able to work on other projects without the guilt of this one hanging over me. And I want to thank you again for putting up with me for (no joke) five years straight. :P Thank you for all your support.

ALERT- This story had been plotted out June 2012. Every similarity is coincidental, and I guarantee I copied off of no one. Everything with the exception of Gutsy is based off the cartoons.

This chapter has been written and edited much quicker than acceptable, as per my habit, so any mistakes or confusing word-vomit is completely my fault. Thoughtful Smurf copyright me, Benny D, and everything else belongs to Peyo. Or did. Anyhow.

Smurf y'all later!


"Thoughtful Smurf! Have you even heard a word I said?"

Thoughtful jolted back into reality, eyes focusing on the stormy face of her Papa. Gaze flickering off to one side of his face, unable to look at him directly, she racked her brains. Papa was talking about something before, something... important? Details blurred in the back of her mind. She'd been so occupied with Brainy's presence beside her, nearly as dark and stormy as Papa's own, that any instructions the elder gave muddled to a smear in her subconscious.

Probably best not to try and defend herself, Papa was not having it today. Shamed, Thoughtful studied a piece of the carpet under her shoes. "...no, Papa Smurf."

A hissed sigh. Papa's day must be going really horribly if he didn't even pretend to stifle his mood. "I asked you to go gather ingredients for me, out by the bog. That is~" he gave her bandaged leg the evil-eye, "~unless you're not up to it."

She shifted, tucking the leg behind her other one and drawing herself up taller. "It's been almost a week, Papa, I think I'm okay to go out for one afternoon."

Clumsy peeked around from Brainy's other side, wearing his concern plainly. "You sure, Thoughtful? I wouldn't want you to get tired or hurt again, that would be just awful."

Irritated as she was at Brainy's and Papa's sour behaviour, Thoughtful smiled at the one ray of sunshine in the room. "Thank you, Clumsy, but I think I can handle it." Not only did her burns not need salve anymore, but she could put steady pressure on the limb without pain. And smurf if she was going to feel useless one more day! Even a menial chore like herb gathering would be a welcome relief from the insane stagnancy in which she floated for the past days.

Even if it meant she would have to put up with more of Brainy's snubs.

After two repeats of the ingredients needed to be gathered, and Brainy's testy insistence that yes, Papa, they would remember everything, the three Smurfs were given cloth sacks and booted from the mushroom to leave Papa to his misery, or whatever was making him so moody.

Brainy, up and gone almost before his companions realized, took point. Thoughtful and Clumsy held back a few steps, wary of invoking his wrath. They spoke quietly to each other as they headed into the forest, careful to keep their voices low.

"What's smurfing with everybody today," Thoughtful started. "Everyone's just in a bad mood. Except you."

"I don't know about Papa," Clumsy snuck a look to Brainy. "But Brainy's still angry at you about Gargamel."

"Gargamel? What? Why would he be angry with me about Gargamel?

Clumsy seemed about to answer, when realization loosened his features. Slowly, like how prey sneaks around a predator, he reached up and pulled his hat over his eyes. "Smurf, he said I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. Don't tell him I said anything, Thoughtful, please don't."

She agreed, though his actions confused her. What exactly had Brainy said to Clumsy? Especially about her? And why was he so angry at her? And Gargamel? What did he have to do with this? The wizard hadn't made an appearance for some days now, any thoughts about the human pushed back with preparation for the impending Blue Moon Festival. Maybe that's why Papa was feeling so testy? Because Gargamel was long overdue for an attack? And Brainy was affected by extension because of his position as Papa's apprentice? Why were so many questions becoming a pattern in her life?

As the three of them pulled up at the bog where most of the herbs grew, Thoughtful considered asking Brainy these questions. He was one of her best friends for smurf's sake! This constant regimen of ignorance was starting to get under her skin. She had half a mind to stalk right up and tell him off. If he were Tracker, she would have. Why couldn't she do the same with Brainy?

The intellect sent Clumsy into the deeper parts of the bog while he claimed the shallower waters as his own. Thoughtful was commanded to search along the shore so her bandages wouldn't get wet. For the most part, they worked in complete silence. She sent daggers at his little blue tail, sticking straight up as he rummaged through the weeds with his hands. Just talk to him. Come on, he's right there. Just open your mouth and say his name. It's that easy. Go. Do it.

But for some reason, she couldn't.

Thoughtful could barely keep her mind on her task, eyes flicking over to the intellect every second, thoughts of him and his enigmatic attitude crushing all else. At some point, Clumsy followed the trail of flowering herbs behind a wall of cattails and he vanished from sight. Then it was just the two of them, pointedly ignoring each other.

Which, apparently, Thoughtful was not very good at.

"Stare at me any harder and you'll strain your eyes." Brainy deadpanned without looking up.

A hot blush crawled across her face, but that was the last straw. Thoughtful shot straight up, fists clenched by her sides. Abandoning her sack of ingredients on the shore, she marched straight into the brackish water.

Upon hearing the water splashing around him, Brainy finally glanced up. Thoughtful felt a flicker of satisfaction as his jaw dropped slightly, but it didn't crush the adrenaline-fueled annoyance clouding her mind. Only when she was nose to nose with him, a few infuriating centimetres shorter, did she halt.

For a nanosecond, she basked in his blatant astonishment. Then, "what have I done wrong, Brainy?"

His mouth open and closed like a mudskipper for a moment. Gathering himself, he threw up his indifferent mask again, turning slightly away from her. "It's not important."

"It's obviously important to you." Did he honestly think she was so stupid? "Otherwise you wouldn't have been so rude to me for so long. Now tell me, because I don't think I can take this anymore, not from you. What have I, or Gargamel, or anyone done to make you so angry?"

With her outburst, she finally had his full attention. "Gargamel? Why..." something darkened his face. He lowered his head, midday sunlight reflecting off his glasses and obscuring his eyes. "How much did Clumsy tell you."

"Nothing! Which is why I'm asking you now, Brainy Smurf, because I'm tired of wondering! What have I done?"

"Everything!" Brainy finally exploded, throwing his hands in the air. "You're so~ so you! Thoughtful Smurf, who thinks before she speaks, who puts everyone before herself, who's so nice and unselfish that she almost gets herself killed!" He jabbed an accusatory finger at her chest. "Maybe that's your fatal flaw, your self-sacrifice. One day we'll all be standing around your grave, crying and saying 'we'll all miss her because she was so unselfish'! Did you ever think that maybe you should be? Maybe you'd live longer if you were?"

Pieces were falling together in Thoughtful's mind, and she didn't like the connection. "You're upset because I helped Hefty and Greedy in Gargamel's house? That's really what this is about? Do you have any idea how childish that sounds, Brainy?"

How dare he. How dare he ridicule and ignore her because she helped out her family! Every single Smurf in the village would have done the same thing in her place!

She looked at Brainy's rapidly reddening face and wondered, would they?

"You really need to get your priorities in order, survival is not childish. You know what is? An invalid throwing themselves into danger like you do."

Invalid? "Hefty and Greedy needed help! I was the only one who~"

Cut off by Brainy's harsh laugh, he ploughed right over her. "No, see, that's the thing, you weren't. I don't know how it was where you came from, neither do you, but in our village we protect one another. You could have called literally anyone to help, you didn't have to take that burden on yourself!"

"Everyone was in the forest!" She protested. "Hefty and Greedy would have gotten captured!"

"And? It's not new, and at least they would have been conscious while we were regrouping, they would have tried to escape some other way, they wouldn't have just lain there because of a stupid vision and waited to be boiled alive!"

"I couldn't help it!"

"That's the point! The weak get out first, because the strongest are able to take care of themselves!"

"Am I weak to you, Brainy?"

"You're not whole, if that's what you're asking. Your flashbacks or whatever make you a liability, which is exactly why you should have been the first one out! You almost died, Thoughtful! Do you have any idea what that would have done to the village? To~ to me?"

Brainy took a step back, quieting from his rant and gaze fading into the distance. For a moment, the only sounds were the soft movement of water and the chirping birds high above. The serenity in the midst of such a breakdown was borderline comical.

Thoughtful, while of course indignant about being called weak and a liability, found herself growing enlightened to Brainy's point of view. Maybe... maybe he was right. Maybe she was a danger to herself and others, at least until she got her whole memory back.

If she had ran... if she had been selfish... Hefty and Greedy might have been captured, sure, but she would have known. She assumed that after her two brothers fled the hovel, they figured she was right behind them. How long was it before someone noticed she'd never made it out? If it had been her, she could have gathered a rescue party and all this would never have happened.

In the same situation, though, could she be selfish? Could she look her panicked friends in the eyes and turn tail? She thought about Clumsy, and Brainy, and all the other Smurfs in the cage at Gargamel's, wondering if they were going to make it out alive, or if this was just another day in Smurf village. Could she have left them there?

Of course not.

"Brainy," her quiet tone thickened by her closing throat. "I'm sorry. I can't be selfish."

He studied her, all signs of aggression flowing from him to be replaced by a sort of resigned exhaustion. A minuscule hesitation, and he reached for her, bringing her trembling body into his arms. "I'll have to be selfish for the both of us, then."

She choked laughed at the absurdity of the statement. Then a cry and a huge splash snapped them both back to life.

"Clumsy!"

Through the cattail cover, the water churned with the remnants of Clumsy's misstep. The Smurf himself sat chest deep in water, weeds and algae covering his head and shoulders. Sheepishly, he raised the edge of a lily pad off his face so he could see them. "Guess I tripped."

The ripples of clear Smurf laughter melted any tension that still remained, and the day was good once again. Clumsy's failed, messy efforts to get off his tail invoked Brainy to come and help. This only resulted in the bespectacled Smurf being dragged under as well, spitting water like a mini blue fountain. Thoughtful's amusement at the sight was cut short as both Clumsy and Brainy tackled her into the weeds, dripping wet and covered in grime.

They played like Smurflings in the gross water of the bog like it was the clearest of streams, tossing fronds of weeds like a smurfball and caking grime to their skin until they looked more like trolls than Smurfs. The walking-on-eggshells air had faded with the last word of Brainy and Thoughtful's fight, allowing all three Smurfs to simply be with each other.

It was the best any of them felt in days.

As the sun sank lower, the three of them finished gathering Papa's ingredients and traveled back to the village in one happy clump, wet shoes squashing and leaving a trail of mud and water in the forest behind them.

When they gleefully handed over the three sacks of herbs to their father, Papa Smurf allowed himself a break from being cross to adopt an expression of utter befuddlement. No questions were asked; at least, no verbal ones, and he bade them goodnight and suggested they take a bath before bed.

Saying goodnight with wet, sticky hugs at a fork in the village paths, Clumsy, Brainy, and Thoughtful headed out to do just that.


Pines rushing by, faster than the wind. Traveling a path too concealed to see. Unless you knew where it was. Twist. Turn. A rock shaped like a Smurf hat. Sharp left around a tree stump as large as a human's cottage. Swooping right. A canyon spans ahead. A river, rushing and wild, bisects the rock. The sides tower above, impossibly high. Holes in the walls, birds fly in and out. Something in the canyon wall. A ledge. No. No, a path. Leading to an insignificant hole. But somehow it's the most important hole in the world. Enter.

In Smurf village, Thoughtful Smurf shot up like a cannon: sweat drenching her pyjamas like bog water drenched her mere hours ago, heart racing a mile a minute, eyes wide and breath short.

Between panicked breaths, two words formed. Light, airy, disbelieving and stunned, but full of wonder and hope and anticipation.

"My village..."